State stands by decision to close Emily Fisher Charter School

TRENTON — After closed-door meetings last month with Emily Fisher Charter School officials to review a controversial school shutdown decision, the state Department of Education yesterday said it stands by its decision not to renew the school’s charter, based on poor performance.

“The decision to close a school is one of the hardest decisions that we have to make, and is not one that we take lightly,” acting Commissioner Christopher D. Cerf said in a point-by-point, four-page letter explaining the reasons for the action.

Emily Fisher, a school of 380 students from grades 5 through 12, will have to close down June 29 after 14 years in service unless the school is successful with a court appeal.

State officials in their letter yesterday said numerous problems with the academic program had persisted since the school was placed on probation in 2007. They said students demonstrated “extraordinarily low proficiency” on tests. Even taking into account the school’s argument that it takes in some of the most difficult students to teach, the school still ranked very low in comparison to schools that deal with similar populations, the DOE said in the letter.

The DOE also stood by its prior assessment that Emily Fisher students scored low in language arts proficiency, with 27.2 percent of students in grades 5 through 8 showing proficiency in that subject, based on a three-year average.

Emily Fisher officials had disputed the state’s finding in that regard, and yesterday, in response to the nonrenewal affirmation, they criticized the state for alleged discrepancies between its March 2 nonrenewal announcement and yesterday’s statement.

“The most surprising thing about the state’s new letter is that they didn’t have the courage to admit the mistakes in their initial letter on March 2,” Dallas Dixon, the charter school’s executive director, said.

The school had contended that 42 percent of its students have tested proficient in language arts, not 26 percent as the DOE had originally stated. However, that 42 percent represents one-year, 2010-2011 performance for grades 6, 7, 8, and 11. The tests involved were the NJ Assessment of Skills and Knowledge and the High School Proficiency Assessment.

Yesterday’s DOE letter also explained that the school was evaluated based on how successfully it was meeting its own self-described mission to educate students, and whether it showed potential for improvement. Cerf wrote that the evidence showed that neither was happening.

More than 90 percent of special education students were not achieving language proficiency over a three year period, the DOE found.

A four-year graduation rate for Emily Fisher was 40.3 percent, Cerf wrote, adding “this rate is the fourth lowest rate overall out of more than 380 schools in the state with graduation rates and is the lowest graduation rate of any charter school in New Jersey.
Furthermore “not one Emily Fisher student in the 2011 or 2011 senior class who took the SAT test scored at a level defined by the College Board as being college ready,” Cerf wrote.

Over six years, attendance hovered around 85 percent, rather than the 95 percent state average.

And while the school in its defense had argued there were some pockets of growth in student performance, Cerf found that to be insufficient reason to keep the school open, based on the unsatisfactory overall performance by DOE measures.

“As noted in our non-renewal letter, we have identified modest growth at Emily Fisher, especially in certain middle school grades. However, this growth is not consistent across all grades and all subjects,” he wrote.

Local legislators spoke in opposition to the DOE’s statement yesterday.

Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence), Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Trenton), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) called the decision arbitrary, and somewhat reckless, as they believe the Trenton school system is ill-equipped to offer the students a better education.

“Emily Fisher Charter School is a very unique school in that it serves at-risk students, 40 percent of whom have behavioral or academic problems, or special needs, and others who will not succeed in a traditional public school environment,” Turner said in an e-mail. “The vocational training available to Emily Fisher’s students to prepare them for work and to contribute to our economy and communities will be lost when they return to the district. It’s unfortunate that the Department of Education is ignoring these unique factors and shuttering the doors.”

Gusciora agreed. “There are students that are very vulnerable, they come from really challenged economic and social backgrounds,” he said.

Gusciora predicted the matter would be settled in court. “It’s going to have to go through an appeals process at this point, and it’ll be a waste of taxpayer dollars. They (the DOE) could have easily put them on probation,” he said.